A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains: a great people and a strong; there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, even to the years of many generations.
A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness. Accumulation of synonyms, to intensify the picture of calamity (Isaiah 8:22, "Behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish: and they shall be driven to darkness"). Appropriate here, as the swarms of locusts intercepting the sunlight suggested darkness as a fit image of the coming visitation.
As the morning spread upon the mountains: a great people and a strong. Substitute a comma for a colon after mountains: as the morning light spreads itself from height to height over the mountains, until the whole horizon is covered with light, so a people numerous (Maurer) and strong shall spread themselves far and wide; but it shall be a wide spreading of darkness, not of light as "the morning." The suddenness of the rising of the morning light, which gilds the mountain-tops first, is, less probably, thought by others to be the point of comparison to the sudden inroad of the foe. Maurer refers it to the yellow splendour which arises from the reflection of the sunlight on wings of the immense hosts of locusts as they approach. This is likely; understanding, however, that the locusts are only the images of human foes. The immense Assyrian host of invaders under Sennacherib (cf. Isaiah 37:36) destroyed by God (Joel 2:18; Joel 2:20-21) may be the primary objects of the prophecy: "The angel of the Lord ... smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and fourscore and five thousand: and when they (the Jews) arose early in the morning, behold, they (the Assyrians) were all dead corpses;" but ultimately the last anti-Christian confederacy, destroyed by special divine interposition, is meant (note, Joel 3:2).
There hath not been ever the like, neither shall be anymore after it, even to the years of many generations - a proof that no mere ordinary plague of locusts is the final and exhaustive fulfillment of the prophecy (cf. Joel 1:2, and Exodus 10:14, "Before them there were no such locusts, neither after them shall be such"): which is best reconciled with the statement here by the view that literal locusts were meant there, but that here figurative locusts are meant.